Ever since I listened to a great lecture and follow-up Q & A on evangelism by a church planter from New Mexico (who encouraged pastors to do more work outside the office), I’ve been challenged to follow his lead. So I did a few hours of work in a coffeehouse on Friday. It cost me. Unfortunately the 2 allotted hours in its present spot was taken quite literal. I showed up about 2 hours and ten minutes later to find an ugly stinkin’ ticket on my windshield.
Everybody hates, or at least gets quite angry with the ‘parking ticket cops.’ One of our golf cart parking ticket ladies at Furman was actually attacked by a local, high on drugs. And no one felt bad. I wasn’t an eyewitness and was unavailable for comment. I still am.
Around any downtown area, these ticket cops hover over cars like vultures, waiting for their time to expire. And to make matters worse, they seem to take great delight in ruining people’s days.
Then something hit me as I drove passed the ticket cop with some anger in my heart. I preached the other day on the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. This Sunday, I’ll be preaching on The Parable of the Hidden Treasure (just a shameless plug). I think the parking ticket cop would have made for a much better illustration. I used people least likely to be seen in church: strip club owners or gay folk.
But as community, who likes these ticket cops? Strippers, gay folk, democrats haven’t personally ‘wronged me’ (I know 10 minutes over is still 10 minutes). That only scratches the surface of what tax collectors would do back in the day. They would actually keep the money for themselves. If this ticket lady were keeping the money for herself and charging arbitrary (not 25 dollars if paid on time) fines, then we’d have a pretty close parallel.
And it just reminds me how shocking Jesus really was. And he still is now. How offensive would this parable have been to its original religious audience? Amazingly offensive. When Jesus stops offending us today (remember his greatest offenses were to the religious crowd), we need to stop following a religiously comfortable, fabricated Jesus; and follow the real, offensive one.
In the Key of "H" 
“This Sunday, I’ll be preaching on The Parable of the Hidden Treasure. . . I used people least likely to be seen in church: strip club owners or gay folk.”So, will these be the illustrations in THIS Sunday’s sermon (5/10)? ‘Cause, to be honest, while I’d rather have my kids learn about incest from Lot and his daughters and brutal wars from Joshua and the prophets rather than the nightly news, I do like to limit their exposure. (I’ll just take them out of the sermon time. . . And I do appreciate the warning.)
Nope, those illustrations were for the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. I don’t know what my illustrations will be for this week.
*grin* Thanks. . .
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I don’t have a clue what that last post is about.
Spam. Smart spam.